Media titan S.I. Newhouse dies at 89

S.I. Newhouse Jr., the longtime chairman of Condé Nast, died Sunday in New York. He was 89.

In a statement, his family said Newhouse was “always the first person to come to the office, arriving well before dawn and bringing to each day a visionary creative spirit coupled with no-nonsense business acumen.” Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr., also known as Si, was born and raised in New York; in 1959, his father Samuel I. Newhouse purchased Condé Nast, and Si Newhouse became chairman in 1975. Newhouse purchased The New Yorker and Details, bringing them into a company that already published some of the country’s most popular magazines, including Vogue, GQ, and Vanity Fair.

Along with his brother Donald, Newhouse owned Condé Nast’s parent company, the multi-billion-dollar Advance Publications, and they “worked in tandem to build a modern media business — its holdings are in magazines, newspapers, and cable television,” Condé Nast CEO Bob Sauerberg said in a statement. Newhouse’s passion, though, was Condé Nast, Sauerberg added, and he was “responsible for its vision, its international expansion, and its modernity.” Newhouse is survived by his wife, Victoria, two sons, and a daughter. Catherine Garcia